Modeling of the electromagnetic, structural, thermal, or acoustic response of the human body to various external and internal stimuli is limited by the availability of anatomically accurate and numerically efficient computational models. The models currently approved for use are generally of proprietary or fixed format, preventing new model construction or customization. 1. This dissertation develops a new Visible Human Project - Female (VHP-F) computational phantom, constructed via segmentation of anatomical cryosection images taken in the axial plane of the human body. Its unique property is superior resolution on human head. In its current form, the VHP-F model contains 33 separate objects describing a variety of human tissues within the head and torso. Each obejct is a non-intersecting 2-manifold model composed of contiguous surface triangular elements making the VHP-F model compatible with major commercial and academic numerical simulators employing the Finite Element Method (FEM), Boundary Element Method (BEM), Finite Volume Method (FVM), and Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) Method. 2. This dissertation develops a new workflow used to construct the VHP-F model that may be utilized to build accessible custom models from any medical image data source. The workflow is customizable and flexible, enabling the creation of standard and parametrically varying models facilitating research on impacts associated with fluctuation of body characteristics (for example, skin thickness) and dynamic processes such as fluid pulsation. 3. This dissertation identifies, enables, and quantifies three new specific computational bioelectromagnetic problems, each of which is solved with the help of the developed VHP-F model: I. Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) of human brain motor cortex with extracephalic versus cephalic electrodes; II. RF channel characterization within cerebral cortex with novel small on-body directional antennas; III. Body Area Network (BAN) characterization and RF localization within the human body using the FDTD method and small antenna models with coincident phase centers. Each of those problems has been (or will be) the subject of a separate dedicated MS thesis.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:wpi.edu/oai:digitalcommons.wpi.edu:etd-dissertations-1236 |
| Date | 30 April 2014 |
| Creators | Noetscher, Gregory Michael |
| Contributors | Sergey N. Makarov, Advisor, Ara Nazarian, Committee Member, Vishwanath Iyer, Committee Member, Andrew Cavanaugh, Committee Member, Mikhail Kozlov, Committee Member |
| Publisher | Digital WPI |
| Source Sets | Worcester Polytechnic Institute |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations (All Dissertations, All Years) |
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